Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin

“I could only close my eyes on the blue / Shirtsleeve of leaving and understand / I was to make my own sentence.” The Exchange (Graywolf Press, May 2013) by Sophie Cabot Black. Third book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Jeffrey Shotts. Publicist: Marisa Atkinson.

“My journey began when the Americans bombed us, in 1943, because it was during the bombings that I met the girl.” The Third Son (Algonquin Books, April 2013) by Julie Wu. First book, novel. Agent: Stéphanie Abou. Editor: Kathy Pories. Publicist: Lauren Moseley.

“The year I drowned, I took the No. 6 train uptown in New York to the Hispanic Society of America to visit their collection of ancient maps.” The Moonlight Sonata at the Mayo Clinic (Knopf, May 2013) by Nora Gallagher. Fourth book, third memoir. Agent: Flip Brophy. Editor: Jane Garrett. Publicist: Kim Thornton.

“I’m pondering this phrase, a traditional Japanese proverb—Fall down seven times, get up eight—as I kneel, my feet tucked beneath me, on the hard wooden floor of my karate school.” Smile at Strangers: And Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, May 2013) by Susan Schorn. First book, memoir. Agent: Brettne Bloom. Editor: Jenna Johnson. Publicist: Simmi Aujla.

“Some fifty years after the 1953 Moncada Army Barracks Raid, at nearly seven o’clock on the morning of July 26th, and at just the moment when the sun’s rays rose magically from the edges of the earth, Fidel Pérez, who had already ingested a quart of Chispa de tren, the cheapest beer his younger brother Rafael had found on the black market, was nursing a badly broken heart.” The Death of Fidel Pérez (Unbridled Books, April 2013) by Elizabeth Huergo. First book, novel. Agent: Katie Grimm. Editor: Fred Ramey. Publicist: Caitlin Hamilton Summie.

“The girl was young when she did it, and she didn’t live there.” Esther Stories (Little, Brown, April 2013) by Peter Orner. Third book, first short story collection. Agent: Ellen Levine. Editor: Pat Strachan. Publicist: Carolyn O’Keefe.

“When people talk about the movement / as if it started in ’64, it erases every / body who vanished on the way home / from work or school and is still listed // as missing.” Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (University of Georgia Press, May 2013) by Frank X. Walker. Sixth book, poetry collection. Agent: None. Editor: Sydney DuPre. Publicist: Amanda Sharp.

“For the households without washing machines, the place to do the laundry by hand in Zacapu, Michoacán, was at La Zarcita, the lake on the other side of town.” Autobiography of My Hungers (University of Wisconsin Press, May 2013) by Rigoberto Gonzáles. Fourteenth book, second memoir. Agent: None. Editor: Raphael Kadushin. Publicist: Elena Spagnolie.